After bathing, one commonly uses one or more towels to dry their hair and body. These towels must be washed and dried, so as to keep fresh smelling, avoid mildew, and avoid piling up of dirty towels. Regularly washing and drying dirty towels consumes water, detergent, energy, and time. The price of energy and water has had an upward trend for decades and as people become more and more environmentally conscious, conservation of our natural resources has moved to the forefront of public awareness.
Heaters and blowers exist for area warming, hair drying, and hand drying although, these devices are commonly too large, too small, or too inefficient to adequately dry off a wet body after a bath, shower, being caught in the rain, or other water related activity. General heating devices are simply intended to warm a body or area and the drying effect is ancillary. Blow drying devices typically focus the force of the drying warm air stream to a particular part of the body and are cumbersome if used on larger areas. These devices have historically been used in industrial settings, public service areas, or the like and often require permanent installation methods, a large amount of space for set up and operation, and a high electrical power usage. Additionally, these types of devices have not been readily available or viable for an average consumer to obtain and utilize in a residential setting.
Various attempts have been made in the past to overcome these disadvantages and provide a means of drying a user's body. Among the relevant attempts to address these problems are several U.S. patents, including U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,269,071; 6,148,539; and, 6,962,005.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,103,577, issued in the name of Michaels et al., describes a body heater and dryer comprising a free standing tubular base unit having a plurality of air output openings of varying size and shape and a common type heating element and blower as used in a hand held hair dryer which provides a means of dispersing warm air to many areas of a user.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,349,484, issued in the name of Cohen, describes a body dryer comprising an elongated housing with a front mounted mirror and a plurality of internal heating coils. Air is heated within the internal periphery of the housing and a plurality of blowers is mounted to the front face of the housing blows out the internally heated air.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,718,650, issued in the name of Ross, describes a personal dryer comprising a cabinet style housing having an internal air conditioning apparatus which provides a means of expelling temperatured air uniformly or regionally through a front drying assembly.
Additionally, ornamental designs for hand held cutting and stripping tools exist, particularly, U.S. Pat. Nos. D 372,339 and D 382,950. However, none of these designs are similar to the present invention.
While these devices fulfill their respective, particular objectives, each of these references suffers from one or more of the aforementioned disadvantages. Accordingly, there exists a need for a means by which drying after a bath or shower can be accomplished without the disadvantages as described above. The development of the present invention herein described substantially departs from the conventional disadvantages and fulfills this need.